ng the eyes
fixed upon her, and sought to justify her course.

"I knowed ez we-uns hed got used ter doin' 'thout coffee, an' don't feel
the need of it now. We-uns air well an' stout, an' live in our good home
an' beside our own h'a'th-stone; an' they air sick, an' pore, an' cast
out, an' I reckon they ain't ever been remembered before in gifts. An' I
'lowed the coffee, bein' unexpected an' a sorter extry, mought put some
fraish heart an' hope in 'em--leastwise show 'em ez God don't 'low 'em
ter be plumb furgot."

She still gazed meditatively at the fire as if it held a scroll of her
recollections, which she gradually interpreted anew. "I looked back
wunst, an' one o' them rebs had sot down on a log an' war sobbin' ez
ef his heart would bust. An' another of 'em war signin, at me agin an'
agin, like he was drawin' a cross in the air--one pass down an' then one
across--an' the other reb war jes' laffin' fur joy, and wunst in a while
he yelled out: 'Blessin's on ye! Blessin's! Blessin's!' I dun'no'
how fur I hearn that sayin'. The rocks round the creek war repeatin'
it, whenst I crossed the f oot-bredge. I dun'no what the feller
meant--mought hev been crazy."

A tricksy gust stirred at the door as if a mischievous hand twitched
the latch-string, but it hung within. There was a pause. The listening
children on the hearth sighed and shifted their posture; one of the
hounds snored sonorously in the silence.

"Nuthin' crazy thar 'ceptin' you-uns!--one fool gal--that's all!" said
her grandmother, with her knitting-needles and her spectacles glittering
in the firelight. "That is a pest camp. Ye mought hev cotch the
smallpox. I be lookm' fur ye ter break out with it any day. When the war
is over an' the men come back to the Cove, none of 'em will so much as
look at ye, with yer skin all pock-marked--fair an' fine as it is now,
like a pan of fraish milk."

"But, granny, it won't be sp'ilt! The camp war too fur off--an' thar
warn't a breath o' wind. I never went a-nigh 'em."

"I dun'no' how fur smallpox kin travel--an' it jes' mulls and mulls in
ye afore it breaks out--don't it, S'briny?"

"Don't ax me," said Mrs. Brusie, with a worried air. "I ain't no yerb
doctor, nor nurse tender, nuther. Ethelindy is beyond my understandin'."

She was beyond her own understanding, as she sat weeping slowly,
silently. The aspect of those forlorn graves, that recorded the final
ebbing of hope and life at the pest camp, had struck her reco